Historic Air Raids that Rained Fury from the Skies

29. A Raid to Disrupt Nazi Celebrations

Hermann Goering was scheduled to step up to the lectern at the Air Ministry Building and deliver his speech at precisely 11 AM. His nemesis that day was the twin-engine de Havilland Mosquito light bomber, nicknamed “The Wooden Wonder” because it was constructed almost entirely of wood. One of WWII’s most versatile and successful airplanes, the Mosquito was a fast plane that could carry up to 4000 pounds of explosives. It relied on agility and speed to avoid and escape enemy interceptors rather than fight them off. They were well suited for pinpoint attacks and special operations, so when RAF commanders decided to raid the Nazis’ January 30^th celebrations, they assigned the mission to Mosquito squadrons.

As soon as the mikes went live and Goering began to speak, a flight of three Mosquitoes from No. 105 RAF Squadron roared in at low level over Berlin. Their target was the headquarters of the German state broadcasting company. The growl of their engines – along with the sounds of antiaircraft fire and the explosions of flak shells as Berlin’s defenders tried to shoot them down – accompanied Goering’s words as they were transmitted live across Germany. That presented the radio engineers with a dilemma: broadcast the cacophony of the raid, or kill the transmission. They shut down the broadcast, then dove for cover.

28. The Second Pinprick Raid That Trolled the Nazis and Ruined Their Special Day

Goering fumed at the interruption of his speech. Years earlier, the head of the Luftwaffe had vowed that no enemy planes would ever reach Berlin. Yet, here they were over the German capital on the Nazis’ special day, in a raid that made him look like a fool. The Nazi rallies and parades resumed after the Mosquitoes left, but it took more than an hour before Goering was finally able to resume and finish his address. Still livid, he headed off to another event at the Sportpalast – Berlin’s biggest sports arena and meeting hall – where Nazi bigwigs were scheduled to deliver more speeches later that afternoon. Hitler was absent, but he sent Joseph Goebbels, the Reichsminister of Propaganda, to speak in his stead.

Goebbels stepped up to the podium at precisely 4 PM – the precise moment when a second raid by three Mosquitoes, these from No. 139 (Jamaica) Squadron RAF, roared in at low level. Berlin’s defenders were on alert this time, and antiaircraft batteries around the city unleashed a storm of fire. The violent cacophony helped the British: their goal was to force German radio to broadcast the din in the Nazi capital. This time, the radio engineers stayed with Goebbels, who delivered his speech to the accompaniment of bomb blasts, shell bursts, and the roar of engines in the background. Neither raid that day inflicted much physical damage, but that was not their goal. They were intended as PR to demonstrate to the Germans that nowhere was safe from aerial attack, and in that, they were greatly successful.

27. German Fuel Was a Key Target of Allied Bombers in WWII

The “oil campaign”, which sought to destroy facilities that supplied Germany with fuel, was a major component of American and British strategy for bombing the Third Reich. Oil refineries, synthetic fuel factories, storage depots and other key infrastructure were high on the list of targets marked for destruction. The Romanian oil field and refinery complexes that surrounded Ploesti, about thirty miles north of Bucharest, were a vital source of oil for the Axis in WWII and provided the Wehrmacht military with roughly one-third of its needs.

The Germans had been alerted to Ploesti’s vulnerability in June of 1942 when the American bombers conducted a raid that met little opposition and inflicted little damage. So they surrounded the region with antiaircraft guns and set up one of the world’s densest and best-integrated air defense networks. When American bombers returned a year later, Ploesti was far more hardened than it had been in 1942. It was now protected by hundreds of 88mm flak guns and thousands of smaller ones, plus squadrons of Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Bf 110 fighter planes.

26. A Cascade of Mishaps That Doomed an Ambitious Raid

US Army Air Forces commanders drew plans in 1943 for Operation Tidal Wave, a more ambitious raid against Ploesti than the paltry affair of 1942. Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers of the Ninth Air Force were to be reinforced by bomber groups that were loaned to them by the Eighth Force in Britain. They would head north from Libya across the Mediterranean, then turn northeast towards Ploesti when they reached the Greek coast. It would be a 2000-mile round trip, flown without the protection of fighter escorts.

177 B-24 Liberators took off from Libyan airfields on August 1^st, 1943 – a date that came to be known as “Black Sunday”. They maintained radio silence and skimmed over the Mediterranean Sea at heights of 50 feet or less to avoid German radar, then flew at treetop level when they reached land. However, the Germans were alerted and the raid came to grief because of a cascade of mishaps. They included a navigation error that took some bombers directly above a German position; and a lead navigator’s crash that caused the bombers to arrive over the target in staggered groups instead of simultaneously.

25. Operation Tidal Wave Resulted in Heavy Losses for Relatively Little Gain

A bomber group leader saw that all formation was hopelessly lost, so he broke radio silence to order the scattered B-24s to make their way to the target area individually, and once there, to bomb as best as they could. When they arrived at Ploesti, the Liberators were met by alert defenders who’d had time to prepare for them a warm welcome. Hundreds of anti-aircraft artillery pieces, heavy machine guns, and a specially designed flak train whose cars’ sides dropped to reveal flak guns, opened up on the bombers, while fighter airplanes fell upon them.

As the B-24s pressed on at a low level, they also had to contend with smokestacks that suddenly loomed in their path amidst dense clouds of billowing smoke. Of the 177 Liberators that took off that day, 162 made it to Ploesti. Of those, 53 were shot down, for the loss of 660 crewmen. Of the 109 Liberators that survived and reached an Allied airbase, 58 were damaged beyond repair. The damage to Ploesti was quickly repaired, and within weeks, the oil complex was back in action, to furnish the Germans with even more oil products than it had before the raid.

24. 1943 Was a Terrible Year for American Heavy Bombers in Europe

The summer of 1943 was a terrible time for American bombers in the European Theater of Operations, and August was especially bad. The month began with the Ploesti raid, which as seen above, devastated the American attackers in exchange for damage that was quickly repaired. Little more than two weeks later, another disastrous raid followed. August 17^th, 1943, was the first anniversary of the US Eighth Air Force’s commencement of its strategic bombing campaign. To commemorate it, American air commanders decided upon an ambitious attack intended to cripple the German aircraft industry.

The plan was to launch not one raid, but two simultaneous attacks against two separate targets vital to the Germans. It was hoped that if the missions were conducted at the same time, they would confuse and divide German air defenses. The Luftwaffe’s fighters would be forced to split up in order to protect both targets, instead of concentrating against a single bomber force. The targets chosen were Regensburg, a center for the production of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters, and Schweinfurt, which housed most of Germany’s ball-bearing industry. As seen below, things did not go as planners had hoped they would.

23. A Hazardous Raid Without Fighter Protection

By the end of WWII, long-range American escort fighters such as P-38s, P-47, and especially P-51 Mustangs equipped with drop tanks, were able to accompany American bombers wherever they flew in Europe. In the summer of 1943, however, that had not yet come to be, and both Regensburg and Schweinfurt lay beyond the range of the Allied fighters that were available at the time. So the bombers sent against those targets could be escorted only part of the way before the fighters were forced to turn around and head back to Britain. From that point on, the bombers would have to continue on their own to their targets without protection from escorts.

The combined force for the twin missions was 376 Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” heavy bombers. Those sent against Schweinfurt would return to their bases in England after the raid. However, in order to further confuse the Germans, the Regensburg force would fly south after it dropped its bombs, continue on over the Alps, and cross the Mediterranean to land at Allied airbases in Algeria and Tunisia. There, after they refitted, refueled, and rearmed, the B-17 would return to England a few days later, and bomb targets in Nazi-occupied France on their way back.

22. The Tardiness of Protective Fighters Cost American Bombers Dearly

Seven groups of B-17 heavy bombers with a total of 146 aircraft, led by then-Colonel Curtis E. Lemay, took off for Regensburg on August 17^th, 1943. Within just a few minutes after they had crossed the North Sea coast into Europe, they were intercepted by German fighters, which attacked them with ever greater ferocity all the way to Regensburg. Two Allied fighter groups were scheduled to escort them part of the way to their target, but only one of them showed up on time to protect the lead bombers.

The other fighter group showed up fifteen minutes late, and in that interval, Luftwaffe fighters had a clear run to attack the unprotected bombers with abandon. Fifteen B-17s were shot down before the German fighters, low on fuel and out of ammunition, returned to their airfields. The Regensburg force dropped its bombs against light antiaircraft fire and turned south for North Africa. The Germans had not expected that and did little to challenge their escape. So that part of the plan, at least, had worked.

21. A Late Takeoff Doomed the Raid Against Schweinfurt

As they made their way south, the Regensburg mission’s B-17s were challenged by only a few Luftwaffe fighters that soon had to turn back to base because they ran low on fuel. Nine more B-17s were lost en route to North Africa due to mechanical failures or because their engines died when their fuel tanks ran dry. All in all, 24 Flying Fortresses were lost, while another 60 of the 122 B-17s that survived were damaged. They came off light compared to the Schweinfurt force, which got it far worse.

230 B-17s, divided into 12 groups, took off that morning for Schweinfurt, but they had been delayed and started late. That immediately wrecked a key pillar of the plan to raid two targets simultaneously: to fly at the same time as the Regensburg force in order to overwhelm the German defenders with numbers and divide their focus. Instead, the German fighters were able to concentrate against the Regensburg force and maul it. They then had time to return to their airfields to refuel and rearm, and take to the air again in time to challenge the Schweinfurt force.

20. A Deep Raid So Bad it Made American Commanders Hit Pause for Five Months

The force sent against Schweinfurt was further jinxed by weather. High cloud masses forced its B-17s to fly at lower-than-usual altitudes. There, they were extra vulnerable to German fighters. Over 300 Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke-Wulf FW-190s fell on the B-17s with a ferocity never seen before, and the violence of their attacks mounted steadily as the bombers penetrated more deeply into Germany. By the time the raid reached the outskirts of Schweinfurt, German fighters had already destroyed 22 bombers. The Luftwaffe defenders then returned to their airfields to refuel, rearm, and wait for another go at the bombers on their way back home. The Schweinfurt group lost 36 B-17s shot down that day. All in all, the double raid cost the US 60 bombers destroyed, and another 95 were heavily damaged.

Many of the damaged B-17s were from the Regensburg mission that flew on to North Africa, where the worst-hit bombers were never repaired. The targets suffered significant damage, but German industry was sufficiently resilient to soon make up the production shortfall. Ultimately, what the double raid demonstrated, particularly the Schweinfurt portion, was that daylight bomb raids deep inside Germany without fighter escorts were too hazardous and led to unsustainable losses. US Eighth Air Force commanders did not fully grasp that, however, until another raid against Schweinfurt two months later resulted in even more catastrophic losses: 60 out of 291 B-17 were destroyed. Deep penetration attacks into the Third Reich were suspended for five months until long-range fighter escorts finally became available to escort the bombers to their targets.

19. The Surprise Attack That Kicked Off the Six-Day War

A jet fighter or bomber is among the deadliest weapons ever invented. On the ground, however, it is utterly useless and defenseless. That was the logic of Mivtza Moked, or Operation Focus, the preemptive airstrikes launched by Israel to destroy the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces on the ground and disable their airbases at the start of the Six-Day War, on June 5^th, 1967. Israel’s quick victory in that conflict largely stemmed from the success of that raid, an all-out attack by nearly all of Israel’s 196 warplanes. In total radio silence, the Israelis headed westward over the Mediterranean, and flew low beneath the enemy radar, then turned south towards Egypt.

The Egyptian Air Force was surprised by the sudden and simultaneous appearance of Israeli combat aircraft over eleven of its airfields at 7:45 AM that day. That time was chosen because the Egyptians habitually went on high alert at dawn to guard against surprise attack, but by 7:45 AM the alert was usually over, the airplanes returned to their airfields, and the pilots disembarked to eat breakfast. In addition to surprise, success was due to the first wave of attackers’ deployment of a new prototype of penetration bombs on the Egyptian runways. They used accelerator rockets to drive the warheads through the pavement before they detonated, and the result was a crater atop a sinkhole.

18. One of History’s Most Successful Preemptive Strikes

When normal bombs strike runways, they create craters that could easily get filled in and paved over. The prototype penetrator bombs used by the Israelis against the Egyptian airfields at the start of the Six Day War created sinkholes beneath the craters. Repair required the complete removal of the damaged pavement segment in order to get at and fill in the sinkhole – a laborious process that took significant time. With the runways destroyed, the airplanes on the ground were stranded, sitting ducks for subsequent airstrikes. 197 Egyptian airplanes were destroyed in that first wave, and only eight planes managed to take to the air. After the raid devastated eleven airbases, the Israeli planes returned home, refueled and rearmed in under eight minutes, then headed back to strike fourteen more Egyptian airbases.

They flew back home to once again speedily refuel and rearm, then took for off in a third wave, divided between attacks against what was left of the Egyptian Air Force, and strikes at the smaller Syrian and Jordanian air forces. By noon on June 5^th, 1967, the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces were largely destroyed. They had lost about 450 airplanes, while twenty Egyptian airbases and airfields were seriously damaged. The damaged airbases crippled what was left of the Egyptian Air Force and prevented it from any serious intervention in the rest of the conflict. Operation Focus was thus one of the most successful preemptive strikes in history and left the Israelis in complete control of the skies for the remainder of the war.

17. WWII’s Most Dramatic Air Raid

At the height of WWII on March 21^st, 1943, a special Royal Air Force unit, No. 617 Squadron, was formed. The outfit, which in addition to British personnel also included aircrews from the Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Royal Air Forces, was tasked with the destruction of dams in the Ruhr Valley. Led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, Avro Lancaster heavy bombers were to fly at night along a dangerous route that left them exposed to deadly antiaircraft fire in order to come within viable attack positions. They were to then accurately deliver their ordnance to the targeted dams, despite protective torpedo nets that shielded the concrete structures.

The mission, Operation Chastise, was a dramatic raid against the Edersee, Sorpe, and Mohne dams conducted on the night of May 16^th – 17^th, 1943. Its genesis lay in contingency plans made before the war had even commenced. The British had long wondered about the feasibility of the destruction of the Ruhr dams in case of hostilities against Germany. The heart of German industry was located in the Ruhr Valley, and its dams not only provided hydroelectric power and water for steel plants, but also potable water for the workforce, as well as water for the region’s transportation canals. Various proposals were examined, but none produced a viable plan that stood a reasonable chance of success. Then, a fortuitous marriage of technological advances and a brilliant mind came to the rescue.

16. A Flash of Brilliance

For years, British planners who sought the destruction of the Ruhr dams were faced with a seemingly insoluble problem: accuracy. In theory, a big enough bomb such as the ten-ton British Earthquake Bomb that burrowed deep underground before it exploded, might do the job. It could destroy a dam by seismic waves – a miniature localized earthquake if you would – if it was dropped from 40,000 feet. However, no bomber existed that could carry such a heavy bomb to the required height, then drop it close enough to the targeted dam.

A smaller bomb, if it went off against a dam wall at a sufficient depth, could do the job. However, the Germans were not fools, and their dams were protected by underwater torpedo nets to prevent that. Then British scientist Barnes Wallis finally figured out a solution. Bombers could be sent on a low-level raid to bounce bombs over the water’s surface and over the torpedo nets like a skipping stone until they struck the dam’s wall. When they hit the wall, the bombs would sink down along its surface, and once they reached an optimal preset depth, they would explode. The water would concentrate the blast against the dam, and result in a breach.

15. A Plan to Skip Bombs Like Stones Over the Water

The next problem for British planners to solve was just how to get a bomb to skip on the water’s surface, then sink along the dam’s inner wall after it hit it, instead of simply bouncing back. Barnes Wallis’ solution was a spinning drum filled with explosives. A bomber would fly at a low level as it approached a targeted dam above its reservoir. Once it was at the proper height and distance from the target, it would release the explosive drum, which a motor had set to spin counterclockwise.

The bomber’s speed would propel the drum and cause it to skip over the water’s surface and bounce over the protective underwater torpedo nets. Once it struck the dam, the drum’s counter-rotation, which had been imparted by the motor inside the bomber before the drum’s release, would ensure that it hugged the dam’s wall as it sank. At the proper depth, hydraulic pistols would set it off, and basic physics would take care of the rest. Barnes Wallis’ science was good and his theory was sound. Next, was to find pilots and aircrews with enough skill and courage to conduct what would be an extremely hazardous night time raid.

14. A Special Squadron for a Special Air Raid

Arthur Harris, head of the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command, personally selected twenty-four-year-old Guy Gibson to lead the raid against the Ruhr dams. Gibson, a capable and courageous Wing Commander who showed great promise, was ordered to form and lead a special squadron for similar missions. The unit, No. 617 Squadron, was to essentially act as an outfit of specially trained elite aerial commandos, and they were to carry out some of the RAF’s most difficult tasks.

Gibson had his aircrews train in modified Lancaster heavy bombers, fitted with a motor in the bomb bay to spin Barnes Wallis’ explosive drum. In order to properly skip atop the water’s surface, the drum had to be released at a height of precisely 60 feet. In order to determine the correct height, an ingeniously simple technique was adopted. Two spotlights were placed on the bomber’s front and rear, and they were angled so that their lights would meet at the water’s surface when the bomber was at a height of exactly 60 feet.

13. The Start of a Daring Raid

To figure out the correct distance from which to release Barnes Wallis’ drums to skip their to the dam walls, another ingenious solution was adopted. Each of the target dams had two towers, one on each side. So two stick marks could be placed on a bomber’s windshield. As the bomber flew in, the sticks would visually be to the outside of the dam towers and sandwich them. As the bomber drew nearer, the angle between bomber and towers would grow wider.

As seen from the windshield, the towers would “move” closer to the sticks until, at the correct distance, the sticks and towers lined up. When they did, the explosive drum could be released. Finally, on the night of May 16^th, 1943, the raid was ordered to proceed, and nineteen Avro Lancaster heavy bombers of No. 617 Squadron, divided into three formations with separate assignments, took off. They flew along carefully chosen routes in order to avoid known flak concentrations, but as seen below, losses began to mount soon as the bombers reached the European coast.

12. The Breach of the Mohne Dam

To avoid detection by German radar, Guy Gibson’s Lancasters flew low, at a height of around 100 feet. One of the bombers had to abort the mission and turn back after it flew too low, struck water, and lost the explosive drum held beneath its belly. Soon thereafter, the radio on another Lancaster was damaged by antiaircraft fire, and it lost contact with its comrades and turned back. Then a third bomber was shot down. Not long afterward, a fourth went down after it struck electric pylons, and a fifth crashed when it flew into power lines. The rest pushed on to carry out the raid.

At the Mohne Dam, Guy Gibson made his attack run, then flew his bomber across the dam to draw antiaircraft fire while other Lancasters made their approaches. The next bomber was struck by antiaircraft fire, then suffered more damage from the blast of its own bomb, and crashed after its wing fell off. The third bomber was damaged by German fire, but managed to complete its attack run. Finally, after the fifth Lancaster made its run, the dam was breached.

11. The Hard to Hit Sorpe Dam

Once the Mohne Dam was breached, Guy Gibson continued the raid with the Lancasters that still had bombs, which he led to the Edersee Dam. It was undefended, but the angle of approach necessary to carry out an attack was difficult and was made even more hazardous by heavy fog that night. After numerous aborted runs, it was finally breached. The Sorpe Dam was the hardest to breach. Unlike the Mohne and Edersee dams, which were made of concrete, the Sorpe was a huge earthen dam that absorbed the blast more easily.

In addition, a church steeple interfered with the flight path, and once it was cleared, the bombers had only a few seconds to line up on target, reach the correct height, and get within the proper distance to release their explosive drum. After numerous dry runs to make sure they had it just right, No. 617 pilots finally released their explosives. Although the drums hit the Sorpe Dam and exploded, they only inflicted relatively minor damage to the structure’s crest and failed to cause a breach.

10. The British Got a Huge Morale Boost From the “Dambusters” Raid

On the way back home after the raid, two more Lancasters of No. 617 Squadron were shot down by German antiaircraft fire. Of the nineteen bombers that had taken off on the night of May 16^th, 1943, eleven began to land at RAF Scampton in the early hours of the 17^th. As soon as it was light enough outside, reconnaissance airplanes took off to fly over and photograph the damage. They brought back film of breached dams and massive floods. The damage inflicted by Operation Chastise killed about 1,700 civilians, of whom roughly 1,000 were forced laborers.

The greatest impact was the loss of hydroelectric power to factories and residences in the Ruhr for a fortnight, as two power stations were destroyed and seven more were damaged. The Ruhr’s steel production in the month before the raid was 1 million tons, but it dropped to a quarter of that in the month after the raid. Coal production also declined by 400,000 tons in the month after the attack. The damage was not permanent, however, and within two months Ruhr Valley production was back to normal. The raid nonetheless boosted British morale as an impressive feat of derring-do. Guy Gibson was awarded a Victoria Cross, and No. 617 Squadron, known thereafter as the “Dam Busters”, went on to fly further successful special raids.

9. Decades Before Pearl Harbor, the British Launched History’s First Aerial Raid From the Sea

From the earliest days of aviation, navies saw the potential of airplanes and used them for reconnaissance and observation. On Christmas Day, 1914, the British Royal Navy used airplanes offensively for the first time, with aircraft carried by seaplane tenders – ships that support the operation of seaplanes. They carried seaplanes to within range of Cuxhaven, a German city on the North Sea coast near the mouth of the Elbe River that was close to a major German Imperial Navy airship, or Zeppelin, base.

Zeppelins and their potential to bomb London loomed large in British imaginations. Fears were spurred in no small part by pre-World War I apocalyptic fiction such as H. G. Wells’s The War in the Air, in which fleets of German dirigibles bombed cities around the world, and reduced them to rubble. Plans were begun for preemptive raids on Zeppelin facilities to destroy them before they began to bomb Britain. The resultant Cuxhaven Raid was the first time that air and sea power were combined to attack land targets. It was also the first step towards the creation of aircraft carriers and the projection of force inland by naval aviation.

8. A Raid That Inflicted Negligible Damage, But Still Revolutionized Warfare

The Cuxhaven Raid was not the first time that German dirigible facilities had been attacked from the air. There had been prior raids, flown by the Royal Flying Corps – the Royal Air Force’s predecessor – against Zeppelin sheds in Cologne, Friedrichshafen, and Dusseldorf. However, the RFC’s airplanes did not have enough range to reach Cuxhaven. A plan was therefore devised for ferries converted into seaplane tenders, escorted by Royal Navy cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, to carry seaplanes to the vicinity of Cuxhaven.

Nine seaplanes, each armed with three 20-pound bombs, were lowered into the water. Only seven managed to start their engines and take off. Their orders were to reconnoiter the area, and if they spotted Zeppelin sheds, to bomb them. Mist, low clouds, fog, and enemy antiaircraft fire hampered the mission. A number of facilities were identified and attacked, but the 20-pound bombs could not do much damage, and the results were negligible. However, the raid was nonetheless a proof of concept that revolutionized warfare because it demonstrated that targets on land could be attacked by airplanes launched from the sea.

7. The British Raid on Taranto

The Cuxhaven Raid demonstrated the potential of sea power wedded to aircraft, but it took decades – and another world war – before that potential was fully realized. It occurred on the night of November 11^th – 12^th, 1940, when the British Royal Navy launched 21 obsolescent Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious against Italian warships anchored at Taranto. It was history’s first naval engagement that relied exclusively upon carrier aircraft to attack heavily defended warships and was a transformational moment for the Royal Navy’s Fleet air arm.

For years before the outbreak of WWII, the Royal Navy had mulled plans to attack the Italian fleet in Taranto. It was well-positioned to sortie out and cut British supply lines across the Mediterranean, and so it had to be dealt with in case of hostilities. The best plan, codenamed Operation Judgment, called for an attack by torpedo bombers launched from an aircraft carrier. The warships anchored in Taranto were protected by torpedo nets, surrounded by barrage balloons and antiaircraft guns, and the Italians thought they were immune. As seen below, they were not.

6. A Devastated Fleet, For the Loss of Only Two Airplanes

In the weeks and days that preceded the raid on Taranto, RAF photoreconnaissance confirmed the presence of the Italian fleet and identified the location of various warships, especially the battleships. Final plans were then formed, and a strike force prepared. A first wave of twelve Swordfish biplanes, half armed with torpedoes and the other half with bombs and flares, were launched from HMS Illustrious at 9 PM, November 11^th, 1940. They were followed by a second wave of nine Swordfish 90 minutes later. The first Swordfish to reach Taranto dropped illumination flares, then bombed the port’s oil storage facilities while other Swordfish launched torpedoes at the anchored battleships. The second wave arrived shortly before midnight, dropped flares, and launched torpedoes.

In less than two hours, the biplanes hit three battleships and several cruisers, and severely damaged the port’s installations, for the loss of two planes and four crewmen. The Italians lost half their capital ships that night, and the next day, they transferred the warships that had survived the raid to the greater safety of Naples. The attack on Taranto ushered in the ascendancy of naval aviation and the aircraft carrier over battleships. It was a momentous engagement that revolutionized warfare. Other navies took a keen interest in what the British had done at Taranto, and Japanese observers of the Imperial fleet, in particular, paid close attention. US Navy observers did not, to America’s detriment a year later at Pearl Harbor.

5. A Lesson Not Heeded by the US Navy

As seen above, the 1940 British attack on Taranto demonstrated that airplanes launched from aircraft carriers could devastate an anchored fleet. It was a lesson that the US Navy, with its fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor and faced with a potential adversary in Japan which possessed aircraft carriers, should have paid attention to. It failed to do so and paid the price for that failure on December 7^th, 1941, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack from carriers against the US naval base at Pearl Harbor.

Early that morning, Japanese aircraft carriers that had sailed in secrecy and radio silence across the North Pacific, reached launch positions about 200 miles north of Hawaii. From their decks, naval bombers, laden with torpedoes and bombs and escorted by Mitsubishi A6M “Zero” fighters, took off to execute a strike that had been planned for nearly a year. The raid was coordinated with other attacks that day against US possessions in the Philippines, Wake, and Guam, and against the British in Singapore, Malaya, and Hong Kong. The attack on Pearl Harbor sought to cripple America’s Pacific fleet and impede US interference with planned Japanese conquests of American, British, and Dutch territories.

4. The Devastating Raid on Pearl Harbor

The Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, which commenced at 7:48 AM local time, caught the defenders off guard. 353 warplanes, in two waves, devastated anchored American vessels. Armed with torpedoes modified for Pearl Harbor’s shallow waters, and with bombs designed to pierce thick armor, the attackers sank four battleships and damaged another four. They also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, a minelayer, and a training ship. It was a lopsided slaughter. For the loss of 29 airplanes, 5 midget submarines, and 64 personnel killed and 1 captured, the Japanese killed more than 2,400 Americans and wounded around 1,200.

In addition to twelve ships beached or sunk, the attackers damaged nine others, destroyed 160 airplanes and damaged 150 more. However, the Japanese ignored important infrastructure. They failed to destroy oil storage facilities, docks, power stations, and other installations whose destruction would have impeded the use of Pearl Harbor as a launchpad for the US war effort in the Pacific. Additionally, there were no US aircraft carriers in Pearl Harbor that day, so America’s carrier arm remained intact. That arm of the US Navy was destined to play a key role in the frustration of Japanese plans, and in the eventual doom of Japan.

3. An Air Raid to Rescue the French Resistance

The dreaded Gestapo rounded up many members of the French Resistance in northern France in late 1943 and consigned them to the Amiens Prison. Word made it out that the Germans planned to liquidate their captives, and that they would start off with a mass execution of over 100 Resistance and political prisoners on February 19th, 1944. A precision air raid to breach the prison’s walls and allow the inmates an opportunity for a mass jailbreak was requested, and the RAF’s Second Tactical Air Force drew up plans for Operation Jericho.

To find the target was the easy part of the mission. The Amiens Prison was a conspicuous building with high walls, located in an open area adjacent to the long and straight Albert-Amiens road. The hard part, in the days before smart weapons, was how to carry out the mission without too much collateral damage. How to drop the bombs in order to blast the outer walls and kill many guards, yet not destroy the prison and kill too many of the very prisoners the operation was intended to help.

2. The Mosquitoes That Stung the Germans

Operation Jericho’s planners accepted that some or many prisoners would die in the raid. However, it was reasoned that they were slated for execution anyhow, and the risk of death in a breakout attempt was better odds than the certainty of execution. So with that grim logic, both Allied authorities in London and the French Resistance signed off on the attack. Those responsible for the mission determined that the plane most suitable for such precision work was the de Havilland Mosquito.

The raid was pushed back repeatedly because of poor weather, until finally on February 18^th, 1944, just one day before the scheduled mass executions, the decision was made that it had to be now or never. Despite heavy snow and fog, eighteen Mosquitoes took off from southern England and linked up over the English Channel with Typhoon fighters that were to provide them a protective escort. The attackers flew low and took a circuitous route until they reached the town of Albert to the northeast of Amiens. They then followed the long and straight Albert-Amiens road to approach the prison from that direction.

1. A Tactical Success, But a Controversial Mission

The plan was for the first Mosquitoes to bomb and breach the Amiens Prison’s outer walls. They would be followed by other Mosquitoes, which would bomb the guard barracks and cafeteria. The raid was timed for lunchtime, to catch as many German guards as possible as they sat down for their midday meal. The raiders arrived at noon, armed with 500-pound bombs with delayed fuses to allow the Mosquitoes to fly out of the blast zone before their munitions went off. They successfully breached the outer walls, then the guardhouse was struck and destroyed. Many guards were killed, along with collateral damage to prisoners in the vicinity. Once prisoners were observed pouring out of the breached walls, the raiders departed and flew back home.

Operation Jericho was a tactical success, but the results were mixed. The bombing was pinpoint accurate by the standards of the day. The walls were successfully breached, which allowed the prisoners an opportunity for a jailbreak. At the cost of three Mosquitoes and two Typhoons, 50 Germans were killed. However, 107 of the 717 prisoners were also killed. 258 prisoners did manage to escape, but 182 were recaptured. Controversy erupted after the war when some in the Resistance denied that they had ever requested that the prison be bombed. Additionally, no evidence emerged that the Germans had planned mass executions of the Amiens prisoners.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Air & Space Magazine, April, 2020 – World War II’s Strangest Bombing Mission

Bowman, Martin, and Boiten, Theo – Battles With the Luftwaffe: The Bomber Campaign Against Germany 1939-1945 (2001)

Bowman, Martin – The Reich Intruders: RAF Light Bomber Raids in World War II (2006)

Dugan, James, and Stewart, Carroll – Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 (2002)

Falconer, Jonathan – The Dam Busters Story (2007)

Gruhl, Werner – Imperial Japan’s World War II: 1931 – 1945 (2007)

Hastings, Max – Operation Chastise: The RAF’s Most Brilliant Attack of World War II (2020)

History Collection – This Day in History: The First Air Raids on Britain Take Place (1915)

History Net – Cuxhaven Raid: Britain’s Bold Strike From the Sea

Hoyt, Edwin Palmer – Pearl Harbor (2000)

Imperial War Museums – The Incredible Story of the Dambusters Raid

Jablonski, Edward – Double Strike: The Epic Air Raids on Regensburg-Schweinfurt, August 17, 1943 (1974)

History Collection – 10 Air Attacks That Shook The World

Naval War College Review, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Summer 2006) – The Attack at Taranto: Tactical Success, Operational Failure

Oren, Michael B. – Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2002)

Smithsonian Magazine, June, 2020 – When the RAF Buzzed Over Germany to Drown Out Nazi Broadcasts

Stout, Jay A. – Fortress Ploesti: The Campaign to Destroy Hitler’s Oil Supply (2003)

Warfare History Network – Operation Jericho: Mosquito Raid on Amiens Prison